Ashes to Ashes
by Ignis et Ventus
Summary: When you find your world in someone, and that person is taken away, what are you left with? Ashes and dust.


Ok, another one-shot. This one I started writing…not too long ago actually. I don't quite remember when, but I like it, so review when you're done reading so you can either agree with me on its goodness or tell me it's pure crap and that I should burn in Hades for what I have done. I just hope that you guys like it, cause it's dedicated to Ventus, and well, who wants to dedicate crap to their best friend?

By the by, I don't own anything other than the plot. But don't tell anyone, k?

Naruto's p.o.v.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I had repeated that line like a mantra when the news of his death had reached me. I don't know why- I don't even know what it means. But I didn't care; it did not matter. It could have been any line, but it was that one that kept me sane when nothing else could, and no one else would.

It was not their fault. My days of solitude and pain had indeed been quickly drawing to a close as more and more of Konoha's villagers came to know me as a person, and not as a symbol that they had been taught to fear. I could have had a helping hand to pull my back on my feet when the ground beneath them had crumbled under the weight of the news of my loss. But it was I who failed to reach out for them. I had let my sorrow, my pain and my guilt consume me whole, had practically offered them my heart and soul on a silver platter to be devoured at will. It had been so very easy to sing into the familiar repetitive routine that my life was about to become, like sinking into a soft mattress after a day of harsh training.

I had let the folds of my mind close in on themselves, shutting out the world I had so previously cherished. For the first few days, I could not grasp reality or differentiate between the world in my mind where I can lay with him forever and the world in which he is no more. Nothing that I saw, heard, felt, tasted or smelt left an imprint in my mind or in my memories. For the first few nights, sleep eluded me like never before. The seemingly endless days and nights passed in something of a blur of which only a few snapshots remain- staggering through my front door, the sight of my milky-white ceiling tinted by water damage, the clutter of empty ramen bowls that were slowly but surely taking over my kitchen. The first time I had looked in the mirror since my seven days worth of catatonia, I had to swallow the bile that rose in my throat and threatened to bring my freshly consumed lunch along with it.

Wrinkled black half moons decorated the soft flesh under my dulled blue eyes and pulled down to cover the top of my sunken cheeks. My mussed blond hair hung limp against my pallid forehead; the grime that had accumulated there made my scalp itch. My usually lively pink lips had turned grey and pinched. It was clear to me then that whoever had said that love hurt had never experienced love, or in most probability pain. I felt like a torture victim that had not yet fully survived. I felt like a torture victim that never _would_ fully survive. Not intact at least. Surviving meant that I would have to be strong. I didn't realize, even when I had most of my faculties back, that it would take far more strength to keep wallowing than it would to simply face my fearful reality. I didn't know then that day after day, I would loose a little bit more of myself until I became nothing more than flesh, blood and bone.

I know now how much strength is needed to get up morning after morning, form in the knowledge that every move you make will be tainted by a shame so obvious to you, that it's a wonder no one else can see it. It mars your world, even turns the people around you into being that they are not.

For the longest time, you don't care. It falls into the same category as everything else in your empty existence. But then, one day, it shifts a little, so little that you don't feel it, don't even notice. And then, one month down the road, a whole month of little shifts, the change is complete. You find yourself caring about the shame that fills you up, yet you don't know why. You try to drown out the voice in your head- or is it part of the outside world- that yells at you to do something, anything, about what you've become. And at first, it works, because it's easy to fall back into the dark shell you have turned into.

But then, you wake up one morning, and take the time to pick out your clothes, brush your hair with more care. And the voice is back, only this time what it's telling you isn't _that_ absurd, is it?

When I arrived at Team Seven's usual meeting place and my eyes fell upon the forms of my waiting teammates, I felt like I was seeing them for the first time since we had all met. As I uttered a small greeting and watched two pairs of eyes widen, I realized that I had not spoken in months.

My voice sounded as rough as it felt, like sand paper. They only nodded in return, as if afraid that talking would set me off, or destroy what little progress I had made. They were afraid, that much was clear. Maybe the colours were flooding back into their worlds as well. Maybe they could see the colours flooding into mine.

The colours didn't scare me. They almost consumed me. First came the yellow, the light. It made all the others visible to me. It was the red that killed me. It killed me almost at much as the loss itself had. Every single flash of red-a wounded ninja, a poster, anything-made hope rise in my chest. Maybe, just maybe, they were wrong. I had hoped, I believe I still do, that attached to the flash would be a familiar face with frowning lips and smiling eyes. The disappointment was suffocating, like too many hands pressing against my face, squeezing my throat and freezing my lungs. And yet, I got my frozen lungs to work despite the pain, I managed to free myself from the suffocating hands.

I survived, it was almost a conscious choice, but I don't know why, or for what. What did I think awaited me at the end of my journey? What could possibly be worth all the pain that was gnawing away at my heart and at my body? At the time I had thought that it was him. After all, he was the only thing I'd ever have, and will ever have of any value. I thought that all of those flashed of red, all those smiling eyes, would be there to greet me when I finished running my race. I was so _naïve._

Maybe I still am. But I've grown too tired to care. I have reached the end of my journey, the one I embarked on alone a mere few months ago, and no smiling eyes, no pale skin, no soft crimson locks are here to welcome me into muscular arms. I can't even smell him anymore. Only the words that explain his existence remain. Crimson and clover.

That was what he was, and, to me, that was who he was as well. Now he's neither. He is not, and the words I now use to describe him fall into the same category as the words I use to describe everything else. They are dull and hollow, kind of like me.

I suppose that does make sense. When he was here, he defined me, I found myself in him, I even willingly engraved myself in him, and he did the same to me. So, you understand, that when he left, he didn't give me back the part I had left in him, and he didn't reclaim the part he had left in me. I am not quite sure that he could.

I lost a part of myself, a part I can never hope to regain, a part I would not want to regain were I to be given the choice. I do not want to be forever basking in the bittersweet feeling that had certainly imprinted itself on it, like the aftertaste of love, or like the aftertaste of life.

With him, it was always like that. All or nothing. I had him all, and now the only thing I have are the nights when I wake and realize I have been screaming his name. The only thing I feel are the hot tears streaking clear salty paths down my face. The only thing left in my heart is my guilt as the sound of my own voice bounces off of the thin walls of my apartment in the most horrid accusation.

Well, that's it. I hope you liked it. I know it was really short, but if had made it longer, well, that wouldn't have worked. Anyways, please review. Please, even if it's really short and anonymous…take pity on pathetic lifeless me.


End file.
